Are there any redeeming features of the Qatar World Cup? Perhaps one: the tournament has a sane and logical format. Having 32 teams reduced to 16 after the group stage, followed by a straight knock out is easy to understand and should produce an exciting third round of games and plenty of thrills thereafter. But if you do have the stomach for Qatar 2022 savour this comforting crumb: it could be the last time a major tournament is organised in a way that makes sense from a footballing – rather than a revenue generating – standpoint.

For let’s look ahead to USA 2026. There might not be human rights concerns here, but the tournament will certainly be controversial for other reasons. It will bloat to 48 teams, divided initially into 16 groups of three, producing a bewildering 80 games in total. Eighty games? To paraphrase a John Updike reference to sex and money, with World Cup football, it seems, only too much is enough.

It’s hard to get your head round how mad the 2026 format is. The top two from the 16 groups of three will qualify for the knockout stages. Not only will this almost certainly lead to collusion, it also means that 16 teams will go through the two-year qualification process, travel vast distances, and then be eliminated after just a couple of games. If weaker sides start badly and have a tough second game in prospect, they could consider themselves out after half an hour or so.

It could also seriously impact the excitement of qualifying, at least for followers of the stronger sides. Almost a third of Europe’s teams will go to USA 2026: which should make qualification a doddle for the likes of Germany, France, Belgium, etc. Arguably, even at 32 it can be a stroll but there are usually a few shocks that make it just about worth watching – European champions Italy will not be in Qatar and Holland missed out in 2018, for example.

The European Championship has been similarly compromised. 24 teams is eight, and perhaps even 16, too many. The awkward number means we are saddled with easy qualification for the big teams and the rotten ‘best four from third place’ teams from the group stages, who may only have two points out of a possible six, progressing. Talk about rewarding failure: even Scotland might advance in such a system (oh…hang on, we had the chance in Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90 and failed).

Things are no better with the club game. The Champions League, whose progenitor the European Cup had a gloriously simple and democratic format (the champions of each country qualified – straight knockout), is also about to change dramatically and hideously. From 2024 onwards Uefa will adopt the ‘Swiss model’ which in terms of ease of understanding is the sporting equivalent of the D’Hondt voting system. But the gist is a league format with, of course, more games, and two places for teams who have missed out on automatic qualification but whose ‘historic record’ in the previous five years is sufficiently impressive. It’s an anti-meritocratic loophole allowing underperforming super clubs a back door entry.

Even where the traditional format appears to have been retained, any impression of accessibility and fairness may be illusory. In the Premier League relegation to/promotion from the Championship has been retained, but if you are relegated, the Premier League’s hefty parachute payments give a massive advantage to the descending clubs, allowing them, often, to bounce right back. Hardly fair.

Given that the two leagues are unconnected entities the whole notion of relegation and promotion relies on the agreement of the Premier League. Because of the ruthlessness and greed of the Premier League you get the sense that relegation is a bit like voting: if it changed anything it would be abolished. Imagine for example, one of the elite were to have a nightmare season and drop down (Liverpool?). That might be tolerated once, but if it threatened to become a regular event…

And how about the dear old FA Cup? It looks the same as ever, the oldest and most democratic knock out football tournament in the world. But it’s like a heritage village, a sad parody of its once proud self. Even Championship clubs field the reserves these days, and if the big boys were ever forced to justify their unrecognisable third string line ups, you get the feeling they would revolt. Again, an illusion.

Is there any hope of a return to more equitable formats? Once bloated, tournaments tend not to unbloat. But there has been one interesting example of this trend being bucked. The Champions League got a bit too greedy in 2000 and added a second group stage, boosting the number of games but turning itself into a colossal bore in the process. Supporters switched off in sufficient numbers that Uefa quietly reverted to a single group stage the following year.

So it’s up to the fans, especially perhaps the armchair fans. If people keep paying to see their sport corrupted, then corrupted it will be. Cancelling that subscription would send a powerful message to those in charge, in the only language they appear to understand.

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